When did it become obligitory to begin all answers with "So"?

[Flywheel]

@guizot

My theory is this: One environment where this has always been the norm is college lectures. The professor walks into the lecture hall, and is taking up a new “chapter” in what is perceived to be one single topic (the topic of the whole course). So, in order to underscore that today’s lecture is just a continuation of the the same topic we were engaged in the last time we met, and which was artificially interrupted by the arbitrary structure (time blocks) of college classes, the professor makes a point of beginning the lecture with the word so. It’s academic shorthand for saying, “Taking up where we just left off…”

Interesting…back in college, I remember hearing complaints that certain professors “began their lectures in mid-sentence.” AFAIK, this didn’t mean that these professors literally strode up to the lectern and spoke a sentence fragment - it meant that they weren’t considerate enough to start the lecture with something like an introductory “so.”

[SlackerInc]

@DSeid

Sometimes to imply that what follows is the solution to the conundrum presented immediately before: “So we took the burnt over spiced fish, called it blackened, served it, and the rest is history!” And in a related way it is also used, effectively, to start or moreso to continue, with context setting, a new chapter in an oral story, preferably one with some adventure elements: “So there we were, surrounded on all sides by enemy forces, armed only with bubble gum and nail clippers …” as Balance notes.

The issue is that it is being used in an overgeneralized fashion and over often … in places where a discourse marker is not needed and adds nothing and where a “Well” would have served the same function. Its being used more broadly would be only mildly annoying if not for its excesive use.

Yes, this. I don’t mind language evolution, and I groan when I see pedants insist on some classic construction just because it is tradition. But what bothers me is when I see a change that reduces, however slightly, the amount of nuance that our language can express. By making “so” a content-free filler word, but not replacing what it previously had been with something else, we lose a useful conjunction (most likely retaining the adverb form, as someone else cheekily noted) and get nothing of value back.

And it strikes me that it is increasingly being used by people *over *40 as well; yet I as someone barely over 40 cannot conceive of talking like this.

[Paintcharge]

@kunilou

One of my fonder memories of high school was the time we decided to count all the times one of our teachers started sentences with “umm” in a single class. Even with an entire class trying, we couldn’t keep count.

I had a theatre history professor the used “as such” like this. In one fifty minute lecture we counted 75 usages.

[Acsenray]

“If you will …”

[Balance]

@Paintcharge

I had a theatre history professor the used “as such” like this. In one fifty minute lecture we counted 75 usages.

There’s usage, and then there are verbal tics.

[Pasta]

I’ve spent more time than I should thinking about this over the years, as it is very common in my line of work. In the cases I usually see/hear, it’s because the speaker is about to start saying something for which, in a normal situation, there has not been enough context established to warrant what they are about to say. The ‘so’ is a verbal cue/segue saying as much.

I notice it all the time, but it doesn’t bother me. When I’m giving a talk, lecture, etc., a little game I play is to try with all my might to leave the ‘so’ off of my first sentence. If I forget I’m playing the game and just start organically, out comes the ‘so’.

For TV interviewees, my read is that they internalize their audience as being the public and not the interviewer, which makes the context issue relevant. If the interviewer and the interviewee were having just a normal, if interrogatory, conversion away from work, I suspect the “so’s” wouldn’t be there.

[scratch_llll]

@guizot

So what these interviewees in the media are essentially doing in these interviews (especially people in the sciences, it seems), is presenting themselves as professors giving a lecture. They’ve heard their professors do this at the beginning of lectures, and they’ve overgeneralized it as something that the “knowledgeable” interlocutor does at the beginning of any turn which is the answer to a direct question. In other words, they do this (they begin all their answers with so) because they think that’s how “smart people” are supposed to talk in interviews.

Holy crap that makes perfect sense. I knew it sounded pretentious for some reason. You are perceptive as hell.

[Little_Pig]

@River_Hippie

I notice it often on NPR. Now I can’t not notice it and it bugs me too!

I never noticed it until I read this thread and now it bugs me whenever I hear it. Thanks a lot SDMB :dubious: And yes, I hear it a lot on NPR too. When channel surfing, I’ve noticed on Fox that most sentences begin with the word Benghazi.

[YogSothoth]

December 17, 1983, 3:31 pm, PST

[Charlie_Wayne]

How similar is this to beginning each answer with "Well … "?

Is Ronald Reagan generally accepted as the person who began this process?

It seems that way to me.

[TonySinclair]

@YogSosoth

December 17, 1983, 3:31 pm, PST

Thanks. About time somebody answered the question.

[Aquadementia]

This is the final reason that drove me to stop listening to Science Friday. Every single question answered by every single guest was starting with “so.”

[guizot]

@Aquadementia

This is the final reason that drove me to stop listening to Science Friday. Every single question answered by every single guest was starting with “so.”

If you listen to Harry Shearer’s Le Show, in which he holds a regular shaming of the “so-and-so’s,” you’ll notice that Science Friday often gets featured. (Or did. I think that show has been discontinued.) People on science shows seem to do this this a lot, which is one reason for my “thesis” above.